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Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Politics New York’s Primary Is a Total Disaster

The New York primary is already rife with complaints of voter
disenfranchisement in at least two different New York City boroughs.
The Cooper Park House polling location in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint
neighborhood was supposed to open at 6 a.m., but the site remained
closed for hours, preventing early morning voters trying to cast their
ballot before work hours from voting. According to Twitter user @KeithRebecca, voters had been waiting outside for more than two hours for poll workers to open the doors. @Kedesai382,
who tried to vote in the early morning hours at Brooklyn’s Atlantic
Terminal Senior Citizen Center, also reported that her polling station
was closed nearly two hours after voting officially began.
Ben Kesselman of FiveThirtyEight.com also confirmed a delay in opening at his poll location.
At another Brooklyn polling station, a voter recorded poll worker
Vitaliy Gazvants informing voters that both voting machines at the
precinct were down, and that voters would have to cast paper ballots to
be fed into a machine later on. The precinct was originally supposed to
have four voting machines, but the only two machines at the precinct
were malfunctioning. At one point, a man is heard telling the poll
worker, “A piece of paper! You have to trust that somebody is going to
enter it correctly.”
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” George Mack, who voted for Hillary Clinton, told the New York Daily News. “Somebody at the end of the day is gonna feed [the ballots] through a machine? I don’t have confidence in that.”
According to the New York Daily News,
Queens voters also faced problematic voting machines at the P.S. 52
precinct in the Springfield Gardens neighborhood. Queens Democrat George
Mack told the News that he and approximately 50 other voters
were told that all three of the precinct’s voting machines weren’t in
working order and that they should fill out paper ballots as well.
These irregularities come on top of the news that approximately
126,000 voters were purged from the rolls in Kings County, which houses
Brooklyn. As US Uncut reported this morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio is demanding an explanation
from the New York City Board of Elections as to why so many Democrats
in the state’s most Democratic-leaning county were taken off the voter
rolls. The state agency overseeing elections has yet to provide a
definitive explanation for the purge.
Other irregularities plaguing the New York primary include the
changing of voters’ party affiliation without their consent, even apparent forged signatures on forms changing party affiliation from “Democrat” to “Other” or “Republican.”
Because New York is a closed primary state, these voters are unable
to cast their ballots in today’s primary, despite being previously
registered as Democrats. Other strange irregularities and
inconsistencies have been reported, including this anecdote shared by
Shaun King, noted activist and reporter with the New York Daily News.
Because of New York’s closed primary system, roughly 27 percent of the state’s registered voters will be unable to participate.n King2 hours ago

A friend of mine experienced this at the polls in New York today. A mess.

The below tweet from @rjpct
shows the contact information for New York elections officials. Voters
can register complaints of voter suppression and voter
disenfranchisement.